Magic items and balance

[Mengu]

In all honesty, I believe it's possible to run a game without magic items, and without giving PC's the DMG recommended bonuses if you understand and can manipulate the system well enough. But you also have to throw out the recommended encounter levels, and come up with your own guides.

This would do a few bad things, and a few good things for the game. Without treasure, repeated use of a character's class powers alone can get repetitive, so boredom would be one thing to watch out for. Superior weapons for instance are already considered cream of the crop, and they would become even more valuable as static bonuses are going to be at a minimum. The good impact would be that multiple [W] and multiple dice powers would become more valuable, multi-attack powers would be less abusable in a system where static bonuses are lower.

It would change the dynamics of what you're used to, but it shouldn't prohibit you from having fun in a game. If you feel you have to flee every fight because the DM is using impossibly difficult encounters and not giving the tools to deal with it, then obviously there is something wrong. But despite a lack of magic items, if you can still cruise through encounters in varied ease or difficulty, you just have to re-examine your optimization criteria, and optimize for the game you're in, instead of the game as written (or the game you think you should be playing).

It's of course best if a DM communicates these intentions to players from the beginning so expectations don't get crushed.

Edit: To clarify, I would not ignore the DMG advice on this, nor would I recommend it, but with some effort, I think it's possible someone could run a perfectly good game by tweaking the rewards and encounter difficulties down.

They feel that combat is some what broken in 4e as well.

What does this mean?

 

[ValhallaGH]

"the DM Guide is exactly and precisely just that - a guide"

This is - arguably - correct.

Unarguably correct.

That doesn't mean his DM isn't a prick that doesn't understand the system; doesn't mean he is, either. Only DarkForce and the other players actually have the necessary experience to make that judgment.
Though if the DMs feel that 4E combat is broken (in favor of the players) and they don't want to hand out magic items faster than they did in 2E, then they probably don't really understand the system and will be using very bad DM judgment when they tweak it. Thus resulting in a broken and terrifyingly nasty play experience for the PCs.

All of which is conjecture and guesswork based upon too little information. But may help DF decide whether or not to stay in the campaign.

Good luck.

 

[MrMyth]

Sure wish our DM's would listen to you guys and/or read this thread. I've brought these suggestion up to them, and what I get consistently back is that the DM Guide is exactly and precisely just that - a guide, and they don't have to follow it. They feel that combat is some what broken in 4e as well.

One DM even challenged me to to find one place in 4e that says that without magic items players won't function correctly.

Dunno...

I really need to stand up here and speak on behalf of the DM. What are the bonuses you guys have compared to what is expected? Are they really that far behind?

If the issue is both that you are getting entirely useless loot, and getting very small amounts of it, such that everyone is way behind in power... then the argument is worth having. If you guys are the occasional plus behind, I'm not sure that demanding a perfect selection of items is in any way warranted.

 

[The Human Target]

Thats something I never got myself.

Why give out items no one can use?

Is it fun to assume they're gonna try to sell the item in town?

Sure occasionally its fine to do. Give them an item that makes sense in context of an encounter. But it shouldn't be a magic item pick that takes up a treasure parcel. It should be an item you know they're going to sell (for 1/5th its asking price.) Or that they're going to break down into residium.

So its basically a fancy magical art piece. It serves no function for the players, but its more interesting than just getting flat gold.

And if someone has the transfer enchantment ritual, it is nice to throw one of those items in every know and again to make the ritual seem useful. But if you're force the party to do it all the time, it becomes tedious.

And you have to worry about making sure the enchantment can be transferred to a party useful item. A power that only works on axes isn't worth anything if the party doesn't use one.

 

[Nifft]

Thats something I never got myself.

Why give out items no one can use?

As a 3.x DM, I rolled randomly for about 50% of the treasure that the party got. I did this for a few reasons:

1/ I'm an opinionated S.O.B., and I didn't want to poison them with what my favorite magic items were, on the off chance that my pet items aren't universally loved. Magic items are important to PCs, and I didn't want them to feel like I was building their characters for them.

2/ Inspiration. For example: "Ooo, a +2 Heavy Shield. I wonder why that's here. There's a settlement of dwarves nearby... hmm, nobody's likely to keep this, so what happens if they try to give it back... okay, the dwarves sent a recon mission here but were wiped out. The shield came from the dwarf duke's third son, the DC for figuring out the heraldry is low, and the reward will be discounted spell components (diamond dust)."

3/ To keep things interesting for me. What will they do with a folding boat? Let's find out!

Cheers, -- N

 

[The Human Target]

As a 3.x DM, I rolled randomly for about 50% of the treasure that the party got. I did this for a few reasons:

1/ I'm an opinionated S.O.B., and I didn't want to poison them with what my favorite magic items were, on the off chance that my pet items aren't universally loved. Magic items are important to PCs, and I didn't want them to feel like I was building their characters for them.

2/ Inspiration. For example: "Ooo, a +2 Heavy Shield. I wonder why that's here. There's a settlement of dwarves nearby... hmm, nobody's likely to keep this, so what happens if they try to give it back... okay, the dwarves sent a recon mission here but were wiped out. The shield came from the dwarf duke's third son, the DC for figuring out the heraldry is low, and the reward will be discounted spell components (diamond dust)."

3/ To keep things interesting for me. What will they do with a folding boat? Let's find out!

Cheers, -- N

It was a bit different in 3E and the older editions, my comment is more 4E based. I shoulda said that up front.

1) I agree with that. Randomly choosing a set of plate armor is fine with me. As long as someone in the party actually wears plate.

2) Thats very true as well. But again, you can do that a lot of times without making that item useless. Usually. And if it is, just make it count toward treasure and not the PCs actual usable magic item count.

3) Yeah, thats the best part about Wonderous Items. For the most part, you don't need em. So you and the players can get creative with me for sure. I do love magic folding boats myself. And figurines of Wonderous Power. Who needs an ebony fly? No one. But by god, they're still fun.

 

[eamon]

As a 3.x DM, I rolled randomly for about 50% of the treasure that the party got. I did this for a few reasons:

1/ I'm an opinionated S.O.B., and I didn't want to poison them with what my favorite magic items were, on the off chance that my pet items aren't universally loved. Magic items are important to PCs, and I didn't want them to feel like I was building their characters for them.

2/ Inspiration. For example: "Ooo, a +2 Heavy Shield. I wonder why that's here. There's a settlement of dwarves nearby... hmm, nobody's likely to keep this, so what happens if they try to give it back... okay, the dwarves sent a recon mission here but were wiped out. The shield came from the dwarf duke's third son, the DC for figuring out the heraldry is low, and the reward will be discounted spell components (diamond dust)."

3/ To keep things interesting for me. What will they do with a folding boat? Let's find out!

Sounds like it'd fun to play in your games ;-)!

On topic though, getting adversarial isn't going to make the game more enjoyable. I think the DMG2 inherent bonuses system is probably a fine idea for your party, but just maybe the DM's thought of something else and will take care of it. In any case, if you think the game's worth saving, you could just try it his way. Unfortunately, there's a good chance that'll be a TPK sometime (if, as you expect, he is still coming to grips with 4e balance), but that might be a learning experience for him.

In any case, arguing hard with him is likely to just harden his position, so if argumentation won't work, you'll need to figure out what it is you really want.

After all, balance is just one thing. It's important, sure, but you can fix it later as insight grows - so long as the rest of the game makes up for it.

 

[Turtlejay]

The bottom line is the amount of *fun* you all are having.

If the DM's think that combat is broken (an opinion with some merit) and are altering the magic item pace to fix it, that is something. If, however, they think combat is broken, and are handing out less items to be an 'old school' or grognard DM, they don't get it.

Tweaking the rules of something you don't understand very often just leads to more holes and more problems. We aren't in your game, so only you know how this magic item draught is effecting your game.

Are you still enjoying it? Do folks miss a lot? Are you often bored and without something to do during combat?

It is possible that your DM's have some system mastery and are altering things that you can't see or don't know about. Perhaps they are doing this without your knowledge for a reason.

I personally would prefer to play in a game where we had our share of magic items. As such, I'd probably mention something to my DM if I felt we were getting the shaft. If you feel the same, do so, and ask for reasons. If things get to the point where you are not having fun anymore, vote with your feet.

Jay

 

[CovertOps]

About a month and a half ago I wrote a detailed post about bonus scaling regarding FRW, but it also applies to AC (which is scaled correctly due to masterwork armors).

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-rules/267173-non-ac-defenses-4.html#post4981401

Have a look at that and maybe even print it out and show it to your DM. 4E really does expect you to have a certain level of attacks and defenses (and by presenting how bleak it becomes by level 30 if your DM does nothing perhaps you can convince him. Just remember to remove the +6 enhancement bonuses that I put into my calculations in order to make your point about how it may only be +1 now, but as time goes on it will get progressively worse for the PC's unless the DM plans on adjusting encounters instead of handing out magic (or even using the intrinsic system from DMG2 and also available as a check box in character builder).